“Oh sanity, what if I don’t drop time? What if I flip early? Oh no, what if I miss my race?” I ran to a spot where I could see the board and sighed with relief when it was still two events away from my race.
My friend rolled her eyes at my pacing. This is the final race of my season. This is the pinnacle of all those late nights swimming and sore mornings. Needless to say, I hope to end on a high note.
And, unfortunately for Ellie, it meant she had to listen to my nervous ranting.
“Hey,” she interrupted my thoughts, “you’ve got this.”
“I ate a donut yesterday! What if it completely ruins my chances of getting an A time?”
She grabbed my shoulders. “Then it will, you can’t change that you ate food yesterday and today, and I’m glad that you did eat, but you can stop worrying. You’ve trained all season, and you’ve gotten so much faster. You’ve got to trust yourself.”
“But…”
“No. You can do so much more than you think you can. C’mon, let’s go warm up.”
I step up onto the block. The small waves in the pool are slowly settling down after the previous race. Nervousness makes my hands shake and my stomach feel queasy. Adrenaline courses throughout my body.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my coaches standing at the edge of the pool. Next to them, Ellie’s smiling ear-to-ear. Ellie had injured herself the first day of the swim meet, and although she couldn’t swim today, she had still come to cheer on the team.
She lifted up her thumbs and mouthed, “you got this.”
“Swimmers take your mark…”
Oh goodness…
The buzzer sounds and all the sounds of the swim meet fade out. I dive in. Ellie’s words echo in my head.
“Trust yourself. You can do more than you think you can.” – Benjamin Spock
That day I didn’t get an A time. My coaches were still impressed by the race, however. And, although I was disappointed, I kept in mind what my friend had said.
I knew that the next season I had an even better chance of getting the time I wanted because I was even closer now than I was when I began.